Thomas Suddes commentary: Legislators don’t seem to have Ohioans at the top of their list

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Sunday March 30, 2014 4:06 AM

If the 130th General Assembly were a car, it’d be a nice one. Its driver gets to go anyplace he
or she wants, and someone else — you — pays for everything. So, 15 months into what amounts to a
two-year lease, glance at the dashboard maintenance minder:

• You’d think Ohio taxpayers are the first responsibility of the legislature, whether it’s run
by Republicans or Democrats.

Wrong. Politically speaking, the first responsibility many legislators think they have is to
themselves — to their re-election. And that means being nice to big campaign donors and the lobbies
that have always run the Statehouse: banks, insurance companies and, first and foremost, public
utilities.

Gone, maybe, are days like some in the 1930s, when the Illuminating Co. (now part of
FirstEnergy) was said to pick Ohio House speakers, or 100 years ago, when Fayette County’s Harry M.
Daugherty, a Warren G. Harding pal lobbying for what’s now AT&T, and other emerging corporate
clients, seemingly got his way automatically with the House and Senate. Still, if the current
legislature’s kowtowing to public utilities doesn’t let up, dozens of Statehouse foreheads soon
will display brush burns.

• In yet another round of income-tax cuts, Statehouse Republicans are in effect flattening out
what was designed as, and meant to be, a progressive Ohio income tax. That’s especially ironic
given that Ohio’s state income tax was passed in 1971 only with the help of Republican votes in
Ohio’s House and Senate. For that matter, in 1912, progressive Ohio Republicans who wanted Theodore
Roosevelt back in the White House called for a “graduated (progressive) income tax.” Today, Ohio is
instead slowly shifting to consumption taxes, which disproportionately burden middle- and
lower-income Ohioans.

In fairness, it needs to be said that Republican Gov. John Kasich’s administration is aiming to
make oil-and-gas drillers pay fair severance taxes (for the first time). And the Ohio Association
of Community Action Agencies, which advocates for lower-income Ohioans, is among groups praising
Kasich’s plan to expand Ohio’s Earned Income Tax Credit.

Still, Ohio’s slow shift to consumption taxes is unfair to everyday Ohioans. The supposed “
fairness” in a flat-rate consumption tax (such as Ohio’s sales tax): Whether you have to buy shoes
for three kids, or an NFL team owner has to buy shoes for three kids, you and the NFL owner each
pay the same Ohio state sales tax — 5.75 percent, plus county “piggyback” taxes ranging from 0.75
percent (in Butler, Lorain, Stark and Wayne counties) to 2.25 percent (in Cuyahoga).

The quest to persuade Ohioans they should like regressive consumption taxes and support tweaking
the income tax to favor rich Ohioans isn’t exactly a shock. As Brooklyn College political scientist
Corey Robin wrote in 2008, “Making privilege palatable to the democratic masses is a permanent
project for conservatives, but each generation must tailor it to the contours of its times.” Ohio
Republicans — the smart ones — are master tailors.

• On the plus side of the maintenance minder — assuming the dashboard’s indicators are in sync —
House Speaker William G. Batchelder of Medina and Senate President Keith Faber of western Ohio’s
Celina, both Republicans, got passed, on time, and balanced, a 2013-2015 state budget last spring.
Passing a responsible budget is the most important job Ohioans give their General Assembly. And
nearing legislative passage now is a state construction (capital improvements) budget that appears
comparatively free of “oinkers” — pork-barrel projects.

Finally, poorer Ohioans will be better off because, in the end, neither Batchelder nor Faber
blocked Kasich’s bid to expand Medicaid. And sure as tomorrow’s sooty Ohio sunrise, given the House
speakership’s and Senate presidency’s clout, either one could have.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes
from Ohio University.